Web browsers have become highly capable software packages in recent years. In addition to rendering web pages, a web browser may implement a variety of web applications. Such web applications may be implemented using various web technologies such as HTML, XHTML, XML, and Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (Ajax), for example. Some applications may run in a web browser on a mobile device, such as a cellular telephone or smartphone. Utilizing web applications as a platform for developing and distributing applications for mobile devices has several advantages, including simplified application development, decreased application size, increased application responsiveness and increased numbers of qualified application developers leading to a more robust selection of applications.
Although a web application has many advantages, it suffers in a number of areas. For instance, web applications are typically designed to run on a specific application framework. Application frameworks, however, are often updated and revised to improve the user experience. Absent an update from the application developer in response to the updated application framework, the web application may not render properly or even function properly following an application framework update. This places an undue burden on developers to continually update their applications and inconveniences users who expect their applications to function properly. Consequently, there exists a substantial need for improvements to application framework versioning.